Word: rostropovich
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...highlight of the master class was the confrontation of the 49-year-old Soviet emigre, who is often called the world's greatest cellist, and senior Yo-Yo Ma, who has already had a remarkable career in his own right. In fact, until Rostropovich switched to Columbia management last year, he and Ma were two of only five cellists in the world under the management of impressario Sol Hurok...
...government was systematically corroding and stifling our artistic life," Rostropovich said last year. "They wanted to prove that we did not exist. We were treated like lepers. We lost our identity. It was like looking into a mirror and not finding your reflection. In Russia," he said with characteristically vivid imagery, "if one blade of grass grows higher than another, they send in bulldozers to trim it down...
...times on Saturday Rostropovich met the challenge by hamming it up for the audience rather than concentrating on valuable musical criticism. One music professor said she felt like she was watching a tape of the Johnny Carson Show. Rostropovich never severed his communication with the audience. Colorful metaphors abounded. At one point in the Haydn D major Concerto, a theme appears twice in the score: once in the low, masculine register of the instrument and then in the bright, upper register. "Why, all of a sudden, does the theme appear in the upper register?" he asked after Gregory Colburn...
...When Rostropovich concentrated on musical points, his suggestions effected noticeable improvement in Colburn's playing. Allowing your imagination to be your guide, Rostropovich told Colburn, will eliminate technical difficulties. The Russian asked Colburn to describe the music he was about to play before setting his bow on the strings. "When you truly understand the music, the desire to play the music will awaken itself in you. Your imagination must always be your teacher. It must teach you before you've sat down at the instrument...
...Rostropovich, Ma played the first movement of Antonin Dvorak's cello concerto. The composition is a staple in the relatively scant cello repertoire, and as such is probably as familiar to Rostropovich as the Lord's Prayer is to the Pope. Rostropovich, naturally, has thought a great deal about the work, and his suggestions to Ma about performing it, reflected the more than 20 years he has been performing the concerto...